devices, and the fact that work had been done without much success toward a fusion H- bomb. Greenglass, at the same time, gave the same Russian contact, Harry Gold, a rough sketch of part of the &#34;implosion trigger&#34; for the A-bomb. There may have been other spying episodes of which we are not now aware, but the information passed to the Russians of which we are now aware probably did not contribute much significant aid to their achievement of the A-bomb. The H-bomb will be considered later. Statements frequently made that the Russians could not have made the A-bomb without information obtained from espionage, or statements that such information speeded up their acquisition of the bomb by years (or even by eighteen months) are most unlikely, although here again we cannot be sure. They must have been saved from trying some unremunerative lines of endeavor, but the real problems in making the bomb were engineering and fiscal problems, which Russia could overcome, on a crash basis, once it was known that we had such a bomb. This knowledge was given to the world by the destruction of Hiroshima.

Chapter 61—The Twentieth-Century Pattern The decision to use the bomb against Japan marks one of the critical turning points in

the history of our times....The scientists who were consulted had no information on the status of the war itself, had no idea how close to the end Japan already was, and had no experience to make judgments on this matter. The politicians and military men had no real conception of the nature of the new weapon or of the drastic revolution it offered to human life. To them it was simply a &#34;bigger bomb,&#34; even a &#34;much bigger bomb,&#34; and, by that fact alone, they welcomed it.

Some people, like General Groves, wanted it to be used to justify the $2 billion they

had spent. A large group sided with him because the Democratic leaders in the Congress had authorized these expenditures outside proper congressional procedures and had cooperated in keeping them from almost all members of both houses by concealing them under misleading appropriation headings. Majority Leader John W. McCormack (later Speaker) once told me, half joking, that if the bomb had not worked he expected to face penal charges. Some Republicans, notably Congressman Albert J. Engel of Michigan, had already shown signs of a desire to use congressional investigations and newspaper publicity to raise questions about misuse of public funds. During one War Department discussion of this problem, a skilled engineer, Jack Madigan, said: &#34;If the project succeeds, there won&#39;t be any investigation. If it doesn&#39;t, they won&#39;t investigate anything else.&#34; Moreover, some air-force officers were eager to protect the relative position of their service in the postwar demobilization and drastic reduction of financial appropriations by using a successful A-bomb drop as an argument that Japan had been defeated by air power rather than by naval or ground forces.

After it was all over, Director of Military Intelligence for the Pacific Theater of War

Alfred McCormack, who was probably in as good position as anyone for judging the situation, felt that the Japanese surrender could have been obtained in a few weeks by blockade alone: &#34;The Japanese had no longer enough food in stock, and their fuel reserves were practically exhausted. We had begun a secret process of mining all their harbors, which was steadily isolating them from the rest of the world. If we had brought